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He can blow his money on 1 million satellites that will all decay back into the atmosphere within a few years
Why should he be allowed to pollute the night sky like that?
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Still easier to cool in the desert than in space
You can do radiative cooling in space (you just need big radiators). You cannot do that reasonably in desert.
Still easier than radiating it into space.
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Helping people with ALS speak again seems worthy, as does helping humanity become a multi planetary species.
Is throwing up "1 million satellites" going to do those things? How about running DOGE and gutting USAID? Or helping Trump get elected? Was that a worthy endeavour? How's that working out for the average American (or anyone else on the planet) with four dollar gas and five dollar diesel?
Orbital data centers are a dumb idea. Put a solar farm in the desert and add some batteries? That’s cheaper. So I wouldn’t be too worried about this, the economics of this won’t pan out.
The world seems to have become an abstract plaything for these billionaires why would they give a damn about practicality. This idiot shot a car into space for no good reason.
Orbital data centers are a dumb idea. Put a solar farm in the desert and add some batteries? That’s cheaper. So I wouldn’t be too worried about this, the economics of this won’t pan out.
With very low orbital launch costs, it's trivially true that space would become cheaper. Solar panels have no atmosphere/night/seasons and are always pointed at the Sun, no cover glass for hail, no 24h battery either. Radiators are 1/10th the area of PV which is very doable.
The question is, where exactly is the tipping point between those two extremes, and will Starship reach that? Opinions on this naturally bifurcate depending on one's feelings about Elon Musk.
I wouldn't be too worried because SpaceX engineers put a great deal of effort into reflection mitigation, including developing a space-rated mirror able to have an RF signal fire transparently through it.[1] The strategy is to bounce all the sunlight away from Earth, which makes satellites darker than even (hypothetically) covering a satellite in Vantablack.
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You can do radiative cooling in space (you just need big radiators). You cannot do that reasonably in desert.
Taking aside you certainly can do radiative cooling in desert at night just fine - you have air, which even if hot to desert standards during the day is still by magnitudes more effective for cooling via direct heat transfer than radiating heat away in vacuum.
It's still problematic that most deserts dont haveaccess to groundwater, so bootstraping and maintenance are an issue.
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Is throwing up "1 million satellites" going to do those things? How about running DOGE and gutting USAID? Or helping Trump get elected? Was that a worthy endeavour? How's that working out for the average American (or anyone else on the planet) with four dollar gas and five dollar diesel?
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Are we including cutting off Ukraine’s coverage at keys times? Or Russian usage?
No need to discuss the DOGE bit, no one believes that trillion dollar saving was real.
‘Musk the Noble’ sure has a smell to it.
Orbital data centers are a dumb idea. Put a solar farm in the desert and add some batteries? That’s cheaper. So I wouldn’t be too worried about this, the economics of this won’t pan out.
Datacenters need cooling. Cooling always externalizes heat go the environment. The places you want centers are cold and water available. Neither space or typical deaert.